A Fork-In-The-Road Approaches: 95 Revelations From July, 2018

Beginning in May of this year (for April), this blogger had the idea to track linked internet headlines from various link-aggregating websites as documented transitions and arrange them into catalogued anthologies. The goal was to map a veritable road, if you will, on the way toward future revelations.

Beyond that, the series of encyclopedic atomization was meant for posterity, a means to compare tracking from previous months, and assembled in outright defiance against increasing internet censorship and memory-holed search engine results.

Predictably, like dots formulated into patterns on a grid, or in a matrix, so too have trends come into better focus as we continue our monthly trek toward the 2018 Midterm Elections.

If B or C, he was installed to bleed the remaining air out of the brake-lines before the big stop; a last gasp, if you will. America’s death rattle.

If A – then Trump is truly at war against the Financial-Military Industrial Complex, and if he loses, then the musical artist Frank Zappa described what will happen next:

The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.

– Frank Zappa

Therefore, if the war in government is real, the midterm elections would represent a fork-in-the road, so to speak. If the Republicans do well, Trump could (possibly) be provided some breathing room to continue with his professed agenda. If, on the other hand, the Democrats win big – it would be perceived as a mandate against Trump, and ensure a further loss of support for the President in the GOP; even as congressional impeachment proceedings commence in the House.

In any case, while traveling toward the approaching fork-in-the-road, it should be no surprise that July was a very eventful month. In fact, the overall itemized compilation was likely too sizable (over 8,000 words) for most web surfers to process adequately and enjoyably during the course of their busy day.

Consequently, and with that in mind, the FULL LIST for July 1-31, 2018 was compiled and placed right here should anyone wish to take the time to read it all through.

Accordingly, the items below represented what I consider to be the most identifiable 95 signposts on our mid-summer’s journey to either making America Great Again or into a neo-Orwellian hell on earth.

Again, for the reader’s convenience, the revelations are sorted into the same category headings that were utilized last month and the month prior. For those blog-rolling on a breakneck blitz and wanting to bypass the piddling incidentals, there are some concluding comments and questions at the very end:

The American Experiment

(Short List # / Full List #)

1 / 4.) Two days prior to the Fourth of July, vandals threw a brick through the window of the Nebraska Republican Party’s headquarters in Lincoln, Nebraska and spray-painted “ABOLISH ICE” in blood-red capital letters there.

2 / 7.) In the Democratic National Committee’s annual Fourth of July statement, chairman Tom Perez said “our most fundamental values are under attack” and lamented the “problems” of low-paying jobs, health care, immigration, injustice to people of color and members of the LGBTQ community, a recent Supreme Court decision on public unions, and the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy. He also expressed concerns that “thousands of children have been separated from their parents at our southern border,” and added:

At our highest court, workers’ rights are being taken away, voting rights are under assault, Muslim Americans are being discriminated against for their faith, and women’s right to choose is under threat like never before.

10 / 26.) July was revealed to have been a “busy month for illegal immigrants committing heinouscrimes” as “an illegal immigrant who had been deported eleven times attacked his wife with a chainsaw in front of their children, another got charged with a series of violent rapes and dozens were arrested for operating a major human and drug smuggling enterprise in a major U.S. city”.

11 / 27.) Authorities in Sioux Falls, South Dakota arrested a 43-year-old man after they found explosive devices at his residence, as well as ammonium nitrate, aluminum powder, firearms, and multiple items related to the anti-fascist militant group, Antifa.

16 / 35.) According to a new analysis by David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report, the Democrats “remain substantial favorites for House control” because “Republicans are defending 42 open or vacant seats, a record since at least 1930”.

17 / 36.) President Trump tweeted that he would be willing to “shut down” government if the Democrats did not give Republicans the votes for Border Security, which includes the Wall. He added:

Please understand, there are consequences when people cross our Border illegally, whether they have children or not – and many are just using children for their own sinister purposes. Congress must act on fixing the DUMBEST & WORST immigration laws anywhere in the world! Vote “R”

18 / 37.) Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saidborder “wall funding looked unlikely to be included in the current legislation”.

20 / 40.) Republican strategists claimed President Trump’s approval was sinking“in some educated, affluent congressional districts with lots of independent voters the party needs to hold the House”. The “current anguish” of the Republican strategists was due to the fact they have swallowed hook-line-and-sinker the Mainstream Media’s false narratives of “Trump’s decision to separate families crossing illegally into the United States” and “his performance at the Helsinki summit”.

Capitalism & Marxism

21 / 44.) Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman, Tom Perez, declared the Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to be the future of the Democratic Party.

22 / 50.) The Census Bureau released data showing the U.S. merchandise trade deficit with China set a record through May, hitting $152,237,500,000 for the first five months of 2018.

24 / 58.) The Wall Street Journal reported expectations by the Trump administration for annual budget deficits to rise nearly $100 billion more than previously forecast in each of the next three years, pushing the federal deficit above $1 trillion starting next year.

25 / 59.) After President Trump Tweeted that “China, EU are manipulating their currencies” and that “Fed “tightening now hurts all that we have done”, the U.S. dollar tumbled; because truth should be seen but not heard. Trump also added that “the U.S. should be allowed to recapture what was lost due to illegal currency manipulation and BAD Trade Deals” and said:

30 / 68.) As America’s second-quarter Gross Domestic Product (GDP) jumped 4.1%, The New York Times warned its readers: “don’t expect the boom to last” because the growth was skewed by “a surge in soybean shipments” in advance of “President Trump’s trade policies”.

Global Geopolitics

32 / 77.) At the NATO Summit in Belgium on July 11, 2018 President Trump told the Secretary General of NATO that it was “totally unfair to the American taxpayer to have to pay to defend Germany from Russia, only to have Germany turn around a pay billions for fuel to Russia and that “something’s got to be done about this”.

35 / 87.) Knife attacks, gun attacks, rape attacks, and homicide, continued to rapidly rise in England; quite possibly due in part to “Leftist London Mayor Sadiq Khan” doing everything in his power to cut “police stop and search tactics” that have “unfairly targeted minority ethnic groups” before “reversing his stance as crime began to surge”.

37 / 89.) Two days after he sent an all-caps warning of future conflict with Iran, President Donald Trump “tempered his threatening rhetoric” and said “his administration stands ready for Iran to come back to the negotiating table”.

40 / 96.) CNN broadcast an audio recording of Presidential Candidate Donald Trump discussing with his attorney Michael Cohen how they would buy the rights to a Playboy model’s story about an alleged affair Trump had with her years earlier.

The President & the Porn Star

41 / 97.) In the investigation of President Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, it was revealed that federal prosecutors had 1.3 million of Cohen’s files.

…more money is being spent on work done by permanent Department of Justice units than on Mueller’s own dedicated operation. The DOJ units spent $9 million from the investigation’s start in May 2017 through March of this year, compared with $7.7 million spent by Mueller’s team.

46 / 106.) During Peter Strzok’s testimony to Congress, Jim Jordon (R-Ohio) got the former FBI agent to admit that the FBI received the Hillary Clinton Funded “Golden Shower” dossier on Trump from the FBI’s Bruce Orr (whose wife worked for Fusion GPS) – which was an astounding admission on internal collusion – before Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) interrupted the exchange.

47 / 107.) Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas said during the hearing with former FBI official, Peter Strzok, that the Inspector General discovered that nearly all of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails were sent to a foreign entity and that the FBI didn’t follow-up on that finding.

48 / 108.) Furthermore, it was revealed that Strzok, himself, actually knew Clinton’s emails were in the hands of a foreign entity, that a whistleblower from the State Department tried delivering significant evidence in the Clinton email investigation which went nowhere, and that Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, was called four times from someone wanting to brief him about this, and he never returned the call.

49 / 109.) In an effort to divert publicity away from the Capitol Hill testimony of disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok, and to subvert President Trump’s efforts toward peace with Russia, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the Mueller Investigation’s single indictment of Twelve Russian intelligence officersfor alleged election hacking under President Obama’s watch; even though, according to Rosenstein, “no American was a knowing participant” in the Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election and there was “no allegation in the indictment of any effect on the outcome of the election” .

50 / 110.) Regarding the Russia indictment, President Trump Tweeted questions as to “why didn’t Obama do something”, especially when it was reported that President Obama was informed by the FBI in September [2016], before the election”. Trump also Tweeted these questions: “Where is the DNC Server, and why didn’t the FBI take possession of it? Deep State?

54 / 114.) In the aftermath of FBI agent Peter Strzok’s appearance before Congress, the full Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal said: “President Trump will have to declassify a host of documents if he wants Americans to learn the truth about what happened in 2016”.

56 / 121.) The AP later reported on Trump’s “week of walk-backs” on Russia and the Federal Reserve and cited the Russian general prosecutor’s office retraction of Vladimir Putin’s claims of his Helsinki reference to $400 million being funneled to Hillary Clinton because, according to the AP: “The notion of a $400 million donation to the Democrat’s campaign would be out of the question”.

57 / 122.) In the immediate aftermath of the Trump-Putin meeting, the Obama Administration’s CIA director, John Brennan, charged that President Trump’s post-summit press conference with Russia President Vladimir Putin was an act of treason; as disgraced former FBI Director, James Comey, called for a coup against the sitting president by means of patriots standing up and rejecting Trump’s behavior.

59 / 125.)“Just days after special counsel Robert Mueller charged 12 Russian intelligence officials with directing a sprawling hacking effort aimed at swaying the 2016 election” and “just hours after President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin”, federal prosecutors charged an alleged Russian agent and “Gun Rights Activist”, named Maria Butina, for using the National Rifle Association (NRA) as a conduit to influence members of the Republican Party. It was later discovered that Butina had high-level contacts in Washington DC; even taking part in 2015 meetings between a visiting Russian official and two senior officials at the U.S. Federal Reserve and Treasury Department.

61 / 132.) During a Q&A with CNN’s Lester Holt at the Aspen Security Forum, FBI Chief Christopher Wray threatened to quit if Trump invited Russian agents to the U.S. and said:

I do not believe Special Counsel Mueller is on a witch hunt. I think it is a professional investigation conducted by a man I’ve known to be a straight shooter.

62 / 137.) As it was announced that Special Counsel Robert Mueller would give Democratic lobbyist, Tony Podesta, immunity to testify against Trump’s former campaign chair, Paul Manafort, claims were made that the Deep State was “using the Mueller probe to protect Clinton insiders from criminal investigation”.

…Trump has made real enemies in the realm of American national security. He has struck blows against their empire. One way or another, the empire will strike back.

64 / 140.) The Wall Street Journal identified former CIA Director John Brennan as an “Obama-Clinton partisan” who “was pushing information to the FBI and pressuring it to act” and who “then took the lead on shaping the narrative that Russia was interfering in the election… which quickly evolved into the Trump-collusion narrative”.

66 / 142.) In an example of apparent selective cooperation, the Department of Justice released a heavily redacted copy of the Carter Page FISA warrant application and several renewals to The New York Times, which accused Page of being a Russian spy; even though Page hasn’t been charged in the nearly two years since the application was filed with any of the allegations contained therein.

68 / 145.) As the DoJ released the redacted FISA applications on former Trump aide Carter Page, President Trump Tweeted that it was “Looking more & more like the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon (surveillance) for the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC”, before Republican Senator Marco Rubio refuted Trump’s contentions by telling CBS’s “Face the Nation” that he “wouldn’t consider that spying on a campaign”. Rubio’s soundbite refutation was then conveniently proliferated all throughout the mainstream media to counter the reporting of Trump’s Tweet on Spygate.

69 / 146.) Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) said during a Fox News Sunday interview that President Donald Trump’s advisers should consider leaving the White House if Trump “continues to publicly disparage the nation’s intelligence community and cast doubt on the evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 election” before saying: “if there were any evidence that President Trump committed any crime with regard to Russia, [the Ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee] Adam Schiff would have leaked it”.

70 / 147.) It was reported that President Trump was looking into revoking the security clearances of several top Obama-era intelligence and law enforcement officials, including former FBI Director James Comey, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, former CIA Director John Brennan, former National Security Adviser Susan Rice and former Director of National Security Michael Hayden (who worked under President George W. Bush). Of course, Congress pushed back against revoking the clearances.

74 / 154.) In another Tweetstorm, President Donald Trump challenged Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s “conflicts of interest” and questioned why Mueller wasn’t “looking at all of the criminal activity & real Russian Collusion” by the Democrats.

76 / 158.) It was reported that the United States, under United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, had signed on to a measure to track every gun in America.

77 / 159.) Ontario police identified the man responsible for a shooting rampage in Toronto’s Greektown as Faisal Hussain. The Islamic State (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the shooting. In response to the shooting, Toronto Mayor John Tory told reporters the city has a gun problem, with weapons too readily available to too many people.

78 / 160.) Since the tragic shooting in Parkland Florida in February 2018, the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence has tracked and recorded a whopping 55 new gun control measures in 26 states.

Big Brother Cometh

79 / 162.) Because a Democratic Party caucus server was replaced by a look-alike, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) stated there was “no evidence” that house computer systems were compromised by Pakistani-American information technology worker Imran Awan. The judge presiding over the case was Tanya Chutka, who was appointed by Obama after years of contributing to him, was a partner at a very Clinton-friendly law firm, and her husband was also appointed by Obama to the D.C. Superior Court in 2011.

80 / 163.) On July 4th, 2018 it was reported that a Facebook algorithm flagged the Declaration of Independence as hate speech. Ten days later, Facebook’s non-biased algorithms also censored a new gospel song, entitled “What Would Heaven Look Like”, for political content.

82 / 167.) In the aftermath of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) claiming that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had “personally redacted information and threatened House Intelligence Committee staffers” and Republican Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert telling a TV morning show that he believed government personnel working for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein were spying on his office, NBC News reported the following:

“It’s sad for me to hear that he’s denying,” said one former wrestler. “I don’t know why he would, unless it’s a cover-up.”

83 / 168.) It was later reported that the law firm investigating the accusations against Jim Jordan were also involved in the FISA abuse scandal by assisting both the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee to fund the now discredited Steele Dossier.

84 / 173.) After the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that Hispanic unemployment in the United States had reached its lowest level ever, in the 45 years since the agency first started keeping records on the statistic, the findings were ignored by the Spanish television networks, Univision and Telemundo.

85 / 179.) Jack Burkman, a Washington-based attorney and lobbyist who has worked with a private investigative team to find the killer of DNC staffer, Seth Rich, claimed to have found a “credible” witness who will identify the murderers as “a current DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) agent” and a “current ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) agent”.

92 / 195.) In early July, “it came out that among Facebook’s myriad algorithmically induced advertising categories was an entry for users whom the platform’s data mining systems believed might be interested in treason against their government”, causing a contributor writing for Forbes Magazine to question if Facebook was the “ultimate government surveillance tool”.

93 / 196.) New York Governor Andrew Cuomo revealed that facial recognition camerasinstalled at bridge and tunnel toll plazas across New York City were scanning every driver’s face and feeding them into a massive database.

94 / 198.) A study revealed that immigration had received more airtime on the three broadcast evening news shows than any other policy topic during the 18 months of the Trump presidency with 92% “relentlessly hostile to the administration” and “just 8% positive” while all networks “virtually ignored law enforcement or anyone harmed by illegal immigration”.

Conclusion

America continues to break apart as the Political Left grows increasingly unhinged and, now, more violent. Immigration and the battle for the Supreme Court further divide the country just as Socialism now threatens a burgeoning rift within the Democratic Party.

On the economic front, interest rates continued to rise as deficits soared and rumors of trade wars, and threats of literal wars, created a sense of impending unease around the world.

As the Political Left leveled accusations against Trump for alienating allies while coddling to Russia’s Putin, Trump’s domestic battle raged on across many fronts – from Cohen and sex crimes, to the ongoing work of Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Attorney Rod Rosenstein as they continue to fabricate a political gallows and knot an imaginary rope into a legal noose around the President’s neck.

Nevertheless, as the nation divides in two like Sean Hannity’s and Rachel Maddow’s childhood friends at a junior high dance, Big Brother runs forward, unencumbered, and with ever-accelerating speed; in an obvious race to the inevitable finish-line at the end of nowhere good.